In common practice, a catheter is affixed to a medical patient by use of an adhesive or surgical tape placed over the catheter atop the skin. Similarly, the hub between the catheter and cannula is also maintained in place by tape. A safety loop is typically formed in the catheter tubing to ensure that any tension applied to the catheter is not passed directly to the cannula, but instead is taken up in the slack of the safety loop. As expected, each of the several times this taping process is to be performed over the course of a given catheterization procedure, a considerable amount of the time of a medical practitioner is consumed. Furthermore, the frequent application and removal of typically strong adhesive tape regularly results in the excoriation of the skin underneath the tape and at the site of the cannula insertion. Difficulties attendant to removal and reapplication of tape in this context give practitioners incentives to change the tape less frequently, thereby causing increased incidence and severity of infection and skin suffocation.
When intravenous access by a central intravenous (IV) line is required over a prolonged period of time, as in the case of long term chemotherapy regimens, extended antibiotic therapy, long term treatment of children's' diseases, or total parenteral nutrition, the reapplication of tape becomes even more problematic. A central IV line flows through a catheter with its tip within a large vein, usually the superior vena cava or inferior vena cava, or within the right atrium of the heart. Moreover, the PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) is vulnerable to damage and occlusion from movement of the arm or of the line itself, or from pressure on the arm and the thin, sterile dressing maintaining the central IV must be protected.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a stable and sterile bandaging for securing the catheter lumens of a central IV line, or any other type of catheter.